Page 115 of Poetry of Flowers

“I won’t ever feel what she must have felt, Dad. I haven’t lost a father to death; I have lost a father to lies. And honestly, right now, I’d be happy to never see you again.”

“Hope, baby, don’t say that.” He begged, but she shook her head. “Mom is upset, you broke her heart. How could you do that?”

Before he could say anything, the officers pushed him into the car and at the same time the officer let go of my arm.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said quietly before walking to the car.

A few seconds later, they drove off.

The pain still ripped into my chest with every breath, but a weight had come off my shoulders now that I knew that the person who had taken my mother away would get what he deserved.

“You’re Kayden’s girlfriend, right?” I turned around to see Kayden’s half-sister Hope standing beside me.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry for what you went through.” Her brown eyes looked at the ground, and she sobbed, “I would have never thought he could do something like that, besides cheating on my mother and keeping it a secret all these years.” Hope’s voice broke and she sobbed more violently. Without thinking, I wrapped her in my arms, she didn’t deserve to see her father like this, and I wished that it wasn’t necessary, but it was. And she knew it.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I whispered, and she clung to me, nodding in the crook of my neck.

She, too, had lost a part of her life that would never be the same again.

ChapterThirty-Nine

KAYDEN

Ididn’t know what to do. Deep down, I knew I shouldn’t have given her the address, or that I should have followed her.

But her reaction had been so mixed.

Was she angry at me?

Did she think it was my fault?

Could she forgive me?

I couldn’t get myself to change into dry clothes, so I just sat there on the floor next to our bed and grabbed my notebook.

It wasn’t neat like Tillie's. Instead, it looked like I had dragged it through mud several times.

All of my songs were about her.

Sometimes she told me a poem she wrote the day before and asked me if I liked it, what she didn’t know was that sometimes I form those words into my story written down in lyrics.

The one I was working on was about how I wanted to tell her what she meant to me. It was named after the one thing she entrusted with all her thoughts and emotions when she couldn’t to speak to anyone: Poetry of Flowers.

Even though she didn’t know why her mother had named the little book like that, it had always made perfect sense to me.

Tillie was my flower, the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.

In a field full of flowers, she was the one I would always pick.

I’d always pick you, my Fleur.

“Kayden!” The door swung open and there she was. I threw my notebook on the bed and stood up before she threw herself in my arms and pulled me into a kiss.

Her lips on mine were rough and raw.

I felt her sleeves that were still wet from the shower coming up around my neck, where her ice-cold fingers lingered.

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